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Originally Posted by JonPR
I don't admit that at all. It looks like that, for sure but - like Golffisshny says - you never see what they've been through to get to that point.
The other view is that we are ALL born with musical potential - because all humans appreciate and value music - but for most of us (in our culture at least), musical skill is not considered essential, so it's not promoted.
Research shows that early musical experience produces apparently "gifted" kids later on. Infant brains are hardwired to learn language by ear - picking up all kinds of aural nuances - and music seems to piggyback on that, if given the chance.
It's well known, for example, that there's a much higher incidence of absolute pitch among speakers of tonal languages, such as Chinese. Pitch difference - the pitch shape of a syllable - affects meaning in those languages, so infants natural pick up those finer points, and it transfers to music later. (Not all tonal speakers have AP, but that's because the languages only require good relative pitch. AP is just a by-product of that extra focus on pitch meaning.)
Of course, absolute pitch is not a very useful musical skill, but it shows that human infants are capable of learning refined pitch discrimination. The conclusion is that the potential is in all of us (as a result of the language instinct), and differences are down to cultural background and upbringing.
Of course, once one is past the age of around 6, musical skill might as well be inborn in just the lucky few. It might as well be just the way it looks, because past that age it's increasingly harder to learn. Just as it's harder for us to learn a foreign language wholly by ear than it was to learn our mother tongue when we were 3 or 4.
The problem with the "gifted" hypothesis is not that it's unsupported by science (videos of child prodigies prove nothing), but that it encourages the view that "untalented" people may as well not waste their time trying to be musical. Music is only for those "lucky" few. That's not true at all. Even if your own infancy was not blessed with the right musical environment to make performing music feel like a natural part of life (as happened to those child prodigies), you still have music in you. You might never be a "genius", but music can still (and should) be a rewarding part of your life. In any case, genius itself is a romantic western myth - as if there is only a "talented" minority and an "untalented" majority.
In parts of Africa, music is a part of everyone's lives; everybody sings. It doesn't make sense to them to claim that one "can't sing". It would be like saying you can't play soccer because you don't know how to kick a ball. You have a voice, you can speak, therefore you can sing - that's their view. Those of us in the west who feel (with reason!) we "can't sing" have just never spent enough time trying, especially when young. We're victims of the "talent myth" - the notion that music is the preserve of a professional elite, not something that is the birthright of all of us.
Music is not a profession, it's a form of recreation - like sport. We all feel we can indulge in various amateur games and sports when we feel like it, simply because it's enjoyable; we don't think it's a waste of time because we'll never be good enough to go pro!
Like anything, you get better at it the more time you devote to it. It's tougher when you're older, for sure, but there's still nothing genetic to stand in your way. Claiming lack of talent is just an excuse. Lack of interest is OK! As adults, we can't all afford the time necessary. Life forces other choices on us. It often tells us music is just an optional add-on, it's "just playing". As if "playing" wasn't something fundamental for all humans!
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Well, I would agree that anyone can learn to sing, and get pretty good at it.
I think what I was trying to say, not very articulately perhaps, that it is all a matter of degree. Whether we start young, old, or middle aged, we can get better.
But talent, and I daresay inherent, in-born talent, makes a difference, in some cases a huge difference.
Singing is a strange art form -- and by that I mean any non-operatic singing, since opera requires a "standard" -- because it can be a direct function of what I would call the artist's "presence." A well trainined soprano, with the proper range and good pitch control, can do a more than passable version of say, Habanera, from Carmen or any other famous aria.
But NOBODY can sound like Leonard Cohen, or Tom Waits, or Johnny Cash, or early to mid-career Dylan. If the vast majority of the players on here, even if they studied hard, tried to be AS GOOD AS, or as ARTISTICALLY distinctive as them, we'd fail. We'd be OK, perhaps, or even pleasantly listenable, but that's about as good as it would get.
Or Paul McCartney, a more "tranditional" vocalist. He wasn't great solely because he played 6 hours a night 6 days a week in some grungy German nightclub for nearly a year, though that certainly helped
Why is this true? Because they all have a gift, and we don't.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't sing, or play, or even take a stab at being professional for some.
We can run, but we'll never be as fast Usain Bolt. We can play tennis, but we'd never take a game off of Roger Federer. We can act, but Daniel Day-Lewis will always be better.